Expand, factor... as a way to solve, simplify?

On Wed, 3 Oct 2001, Daniel Lemire wrote:

>I just get mad when people say things like... "the problem isn't with
>the software, it is with you..." You have to be very careful when you

I agree pretty much to everything you say. I don't accept the
reasoning of some people on the list, althought I suspect I
somewhat understand their views.

What you want from Maxima, is to solve simple one-line equations,
or maybe to teach your students how to solve them with a CAS.

What Mr. Fateman expects a computer algebra to do, is not to teach
students how to do things with a CAS that every mathematician
could do by hand in a minute or two. I believe he considers
Maxima to be a tool for solving deep and large engineering
or mathematical problems. For such a thing a single (althought)
powerful "solve" function would not help much, because one
needs to write large amount of custom Maxima programs anyway to solve
the problem.

For a student, the aid from a CAS is to help solving equations
what the student couldn't do by hand. For Mr. Fateman, the
purpose of a CAS is different--I'm sure he could solve all
the equations by hand what any CAS system can--but to do the
handling of large systems automatically to reduce the amount of
hand work.

I also believe that the marketing forces have driven the abilities
of Mathematica and Maple to the first direction, while the
non-commercial efforts of engineers and mathematicians have driven
the power of Macsyma in to the other direction.

That said, I really hope that Maxima would be suitable for your work.
I'm a novice user and can't judge that, but Maxima has helped me
to solve many even simple problems.